When you’re the lead dog, the only thing the rest of the pack sees is a bull’s-eye. And the folks behind AMD’s ATI brand have been staring at that target for more than two years.
Having failed to defeat their graphic rivals the high end, AMD has lowered its sights to focus on the middle range—the price point where they figure most people actually buy new videocards. And so today they’ve introduced the top end of their new ATI Radeon HD 2000 series: The 2900 XT. This GPU can’t compete with Nvidia’s top-end GeForce 8800 Ultra or even the slightly less-powerful GeForce 8800 GTX. No, the $400 Radeon HD 2900 XT is aimed squarely at Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GTS.
It took a while for that message to sink in when AMD briefed us several weeks back, especially when Rick Bergman, senior vice president of the AMD Graphics Group opened his remarks with “Yes, we’ve lost market share over the past couple quarters, but you’re going to see AMD come out swinging.”
Uh, Rick, seems your bat is a wee bit small.
NICE BAT YOU GOT THERE
But when you study the HD 2900 XT, you realize there’s some pretty solid wood in it. And in terms of benchmarks, it does outrun Nvidia’s 640MB 8800 GTS. But here’s the key question: Can AMD take market share away from Nvidia without even trying to compete at the high end. After all, people tend to perceive the winner at the high end to be the winner across the board. More importantly, this quarter’s high-end product is the next quarter’s mid-range—and this quarter’s mid-range is the next quarter’s bargain. What’s AMD going to do when the much-faster 8800 GTX falls into mid-range territory?
For now, let’s see what AMD has to offer today, looking at the new chip’s architecture first and its benchmark performance second. It should surprise no one that the entire HD-2000 series features a unified shader architecture. DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 all but demand it, after all, and ATI has previous experience developing this type of graphics processor (for Microsoft’s Xbox 360). This means all the chip’s stream processors (there are 320 inside the 2900 XT) can perform vertex, pixel, or geometry shading as the need arises.
The Radeon HD 2900 XT is only a trifle longer than a GeForce 8800 GTS
These components, however, are limited to operating at the same speed as the core (up to 740MHz for the 2900 XT). The 8800 GTX, in comparison, has just 128 stream processors, but they run at more than twice the speed of the core: 1.35GHz versus the core’s clock speed of 575MHz. But as we’ll see when we look at benchmark numbers, this speed trick doesn’t help the 96 stream processors in Nvidia’s 8800 GTS out-gun AMD’s 2900 XT.
AMD’s engineers have doubled the width of the ring-bus memory architecture they introduced with the Radeon X1000 series to a full 512 bits. The theory behind the ring bus is that you can speed up memory transfers by decentralizing the chip’s memory access. In AMD’s design, four “ring stops” surround the GPU; and each ring stop has two 64-bit memory channels (2x64x4=512) over which memory reads and writes can occur.
Comments are closed on this article
wkdyff
July 18, 2007 at 1:05pm
I went to buy a 2900 radeon at 3 stores checking out pricing.
When I noticed that those stores had the card I wanted, but they were all returns APROX 9-10 BOXES no new ones. The reasons for returning are....
"not giving the benchmarks quoted"
"Poor quality, not fast enough"
Then I looked for specs and benchmarks on pages like this one. they only show one or two games that out bench Nvidia. But Nvidia seems to out bench on dozens of other games that Ati dont benchmark with.
I wanted a Ati, but after what I have seen with the returns, I DONT WANT ONE!!
Ceadderman
September 15, 2007 at 3:02am
Everytime we've used an ATI(pre AMD merger)they work fine for a few months and then just crap out. And I'm not talking their low end stuff either.
Now that they've merged with AMD, I just might actually make a change in my purchase process. Because every AMD chip I've owned has NOT crapped out. If AMD can put a solid chip on the ATI boards and they run those kinds of speeds I will think long and hard whereas before there wasn't even a glance in their direction. Come to think about it I'm off to compare pricess now.
"If at first you don't succeed... Shoot the summabiotch. Problem solved."
zioburosky13
May 15, 2007 at 10:24pm
Until DX-10 games are release, I don't see the point getting a DX-10 card, for now.
Geot
May 15, 2007 at 1:39pm
by Michael Brown
When you’re the lead dog, the only thing the rest of the pack sees is a bull’s-eye. And the folks behind in AMD’s ATI brand have been staring at that target for more than two years.
Having failed to defeat their graphic rivals the high end, AMD has lowered its sights to focus on the middle range—the price point where they figure most people actually buy new videocards.* by Geot: !WTF i know Nvidia 8800 GTX has a lot better performance than this new ATI HD 2900 XT and i know you guys is alway about supreme power but you dont see the other side of the face, hell and hell i bet you i will`nt have any problems running Crysis with most settings up using this new ATI video card, who needs a lamborghini when you can have a corvette to get to the same place without lossing playable performace in a game,i think this video card will be able to run smoth performance in most of direcxt 10 games, why the heck do i need more,unless someone invent a game that is not playable in any fricking machine and what about the price dont you see why they have this price this product is approaching not only to gamer but for movies entertaiment enthusiast with digital video and sound solutions, i know AMD/ATI is late with this product but it wont take that long when they begin to bring more powerfull video cards to the market that way you can be happy, the problem with you people its a little of arrogance with Nvidia cards......
JNorman
May 14, 2007 at 5:49pm
its nice to see the frames comparison, it is all that matters. now id like to see one of these companies just absolutely blow the competition out of the water with a performance breakthrough. after all anyone buying these cards aren't looking to improve the performance in solitaire, hearts or pokerstars.
Geot
May 14, 2007 at 12:50pm
Ha,Ha,Ha I dont know but i been reading Maximun PC for the last two years and every time ATI bring something new to the market Maximun PC magazine always write negatives article against ATI products, what are you ATI haters guys.....?
blackzarg
May 14, 2007 at 5:34pm
I think that AMD's choice to go for the midrange is good for now - it's better to have something than nothing at all. The price will probably drop as there are more available.
I don't think the staff @ MPC are ATI haters. They've given them some favorable reviews, especially for the budget cards (the x800 XL and the X1950 Pro come in mind), and I remember that the 9800 dominated the best card list for awhile back in the day. They just give the truth, that's all.
grandmasterub
May 14, 2007 at 11:54am
The card comes with a DVI->HDMI adaptor that will provide the video and audio of HDMI. Also a 1GB version of the 2900 will be released at some point.
ironmon1
May 14, 2007 at 8:30am
lol...that's funny, especially from a company that was planning to release a 1GB DDR4 2900XTX, before they saw that it preformed so poorly that it was defeated by the XT most of the time. I'm curious, though...I see 2 DVI ports, and HDCP support. Does this mean I don't need HDMI? Otherwise, instead of buying a new monitor for HD stuff, I'll just get me anyHDDVD-and give the MPAA the finger!!!!!
sammyd253
May 14, 2007 at 6:33am
I think this is a good move on AMD's part. For users who enjoy HD movies and want to view them on their PC's, this would be a good choice.
Also, you mentioned that since AMD is only attacking the mid-range series of cards, so what are they to do when the GTX drops to mid-range? Simple, release an updated version of the current GPU, or release a new one. AMD has had plenty of time to research the GTX and find ways to come out with better products. If they always stay one step behind Nvidia, they can come out with a more reliable, efficient, and better costing product.
I think they have the right idea here.
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